The Games Children Play
by That Girl55
Summary: And as she looked at the two men before her, one dressed in all white with a silver hook for a hand and the other merely an adolescent, clad in leaves and blood, Wendy did not know whose heart was blacker, whose soul was doomed.
1. Chapter 1

**Originally written on my Quotev account, I thought it would be better published here! xx. **

* * *

A seventeen year old Wendy Darling leaned her head against the cool window in the winter night, thinking of what was to come tomorrow.  
Her parents wanted her married, and married for money. The Darlings were quickly burning through their savings after Mr. Darling had lost his job at the bank, and the only thing they really had left was a good name; a good name that could help them get their barely-underage daughter married.  
So tomorrow the parties would begin, the balls and the dances with strangers and the 'excitement,' her friends said, that would come with courting.  
But her friends had never known excitement like she had, never felt the clouds as they flew threw open air, never fought a ruthless one-handed pirate, and had never fallen in love with an immortal thirteen year old boy.  
Four years had past, and no word had come, and it was time for her to move on and forget the boy who, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, never existed.  
Michael and John were away at school, the last of Father's money went to funding their education, and so there was no one to tell stories to anymore.  
"You'll be telling your own children stories soon, love." her mother would tell her, but Wendy could only sigh sadly at the thought of it.  
She had been a mother once, she wanted to say, but those boys were all off living with their respective families now, you see, and the children who weren't belonged to Aunt Millicent.  
So instead, Wendy sat at the window and waited, not really for Peter Pan any longer, but for anything that would come and save her from this misery.


	2. Chapter 2

Around three in the morning, Wendy awoke suddenly to find herself staring once more into those forget-me-not eyes, the glint of a silver hook in the darkness.  
"Hook!" She yelled, startled as she jumped off the bed, only to land in the arms of Smee.  
"Ah, don't fret, Miss Wendy! We're just going to be taking you back to your rightful place now, aren't we, Captain sir?" Smee said, offering her a jolly smile.  
Wendy wiggled and squirmed in his arms which began to slip, but Hook had grabbed her at the very moment before she was free and clasped onto her himself. Even with only one hand, he was strong enough to secure her firmly over his shoulder.  
"Come on, Wendy dear, you know you want to see Peter again, don't you?" Smee said.  
"Leave it alone, Smee." Hook turned his head round to talk to her. "Now understand, we don't want to hurt you. We're using you as a pawn, dear, to get back at Peter. This all goes well and you'll be back safe and sound in your bed by morning."  
Wendy rolled her eyes-with Peter and Hook, nothing ever went as planned.

* * *

When Wendy opened her eyes once more, it was to the faint familiarity of a house built of sticks and leaves.  
"Hello?" She asked, searching for a door but still scared of what she would open it to. As she found the knob, she took a deep breath. She had faced this world once, she could do it again.  
She pushed open the door to find herself eye-to-eye with a young boy, a perfectly familiar young boy.  
"Peter Pan," she whispered in awe; he hadn't aged a day and here she was, four years older.  
"The one and only! Oh, I'm so glad you're back Wendy, and obviously ready to play! There should be a new group of Lost Boys coming in soon, and it was so much fun to fight Hook for you! I won, of course, and took you back to your house, where you belong."  
She looked at the forest around her, and the house that should have collapsed by now.  
This world was wrong, maybe that's why she chose to leave four years ago. But, this world was still better than facing the realities of adult life that she was about to walk into tomorrow.  
"How hasn't the house fallen in by now?" She questioned.  
"The Neverland magic, of course!" He grabbed her by her china-colored biceps. "Don't you remember, Wendy, nothing ever ages here. Nothing changes, nothing grows; but mostly, nothing dies."


	3. Chapter 3

Wendy's face grew pale, and Peter grew concerned.  
His face washed over with forgetfulness and excitement, however, when a horde of shouts and cheers erupted from a nearby spot.  
"The new Lost Boys are here, come on!" He grabbed Wendy's hand, his own hand almost smaller than hers now, and tugged her along through the weeds and brambles of the forest, most of the branches so low now she had to duck under them.  
"Peter, where are we going!"  
"Don't you remember? To the treehouse, Wendy!" He looked back at her, a childish glint in his eyes, and continued to pull her along with him.  
He pulled her towards the already-open door to the tree, to which he readily exclaimed, "This is so great! Look Wendy, they've already found their way home."  
And she replied, "Peter, I don't think I can fit-"  
But stopped when she found that, with a lot of bending and crouching, she could fit through the door and, thankfully, the treehouse home was big enough for her to stand.  
Wendy wasn't that tall, even, standing at an average 5'5.  
Peter was ecstatic as he looked around the room at the makeshift group of boys-ranging from tall to short, fat to skinny.  
"You'll be Tootles," He said, pointing to a boy dressed in the garments of a newsie. "And you can be Nibs."  
It was then that, with shock, Wendy realized there was no real child named Slightly or Curly or The Twins, not even a Nibs or Tootles. They were all names, all characteristics, of the original lost boys-who came about god knows how long ago-and were passed down on to each new group.  
It made Wendy's heart ache to see the names she had come to love and cherish, the names of boys she had once mothered, being given on to children who didn't know the meaning, didn't know the story, behind the precious gift of a name they were being given.  
"I am Peter, your father, King of all!" Peter yelled, pulling out his sword and teasingly scaring them with it before they all shared a laugh. "and this is Wendy, your mother."


	4. Chapter 4

Wendy crossed her arms with a humph, but didn't object to being called mother again.  
She was much too young at thirteen, to be the lost boy's mother, but at seventeen the situation suddenly seemed much more realistic.  
"So, let us eat!" Peter said, crowding with the new lost boys around an empty table, assembled from the bark of a tree.  
"Peter," One of the boys prompted.  
"It's father, Tibs."  
"There's no food."  
"That's because your dear mother, hasn't brought us any yet!" Peter propped his head up on his elbow.  
"Alright, what would you boys like?" Wendy was glad that her own mother had, in preparing her to be married off, taught her many household skills.  
"Potatoes!"  
"Beef!"  
"Ham!"  
"Berries!" Peter cut in. "There, it is decided, Wendy shall make us berries, won't you mother?"  
"Berries?" Wendy shook her head. "That's not a very good dinner. I suppose I could make you a pie for dessert, or-"  
"Wendy!" Peter cried, jumping up from his seat at the table and leading her towards the door to speak privately.  
"What is it, Peter?"  
"I'm father, and you're mother, don't you remember how to play!"  
Wendy blushed, looking at her feet, for she realized she had indeed forgotten how to play any game, to be exact.  
"No, no, no! It's fine, Mother. I'm Father, so what I say goes. When I saw I want berries, we all eat berries, understand!"  
And Wendy opened her mouth to correct him, to say that's not how the world works anymore, but instead quieted herself.  
This was only a game, then, so what harm could a game do?  
"Yes, Pe-Father." She nodded.  
"Excelent!" he turned back to the new Lost Boys. "Boys, we'll be having berries tonight!"  
One or two of the boys smiled, but none of them whooped or cheered or even gave a sound of praise-they hardly gave any sound at all.  
Peter sighed as he shooed Wendy out the door, it seemed like everyone had forgotten how to play these days.


	5. Chapter 5

He approached her in the moonlight, when she was still looking for the old brand of berries that used to be Peter's favorite.  
It seemed that the older she had gotten, the less clear her memories of Neverland were; she could never remember specifics anymore. For example, she remembered a jealous fairy, but she didn't remember the fairy's name.  
She remembered a one-handed pirate, but until the familiar glint in the night and the slide of the cool blade on her skin she did not remember his name.  
"Has your memory been failing you as well, my sweet Miss Darling."  
"It's Ms. now, actually." She corrected, her tone biting and sharp. "I am of marriageable age. Maybe it's your memory that's failing you."  
"Ah, yes. So, pray tell then, Ms. Wendy Darling, are you happy with Peter still today?"  
"I must say," She said, regret clogging her throat. "No, no he's not. He's still a boy, Captain."  
"Ah, so now I'm captain?" Hook smiled, wondering inwardly why he seemed so delighted by this. "What happened to the oh-so menacing nickname?"  
"I grew up, and I'm sick of playing such games. Really, you're just a person with a disability; it's not like it defines you." Hook's eyes narrowed at the word 'disability,' for his hook was what made him who he was, what allowed him to be the villain in the age-old story of Peter Pan! Without his hook, he was nothing...or was he? "Look, your names is James Hook, Captain James Hook, and you deserve to be more than some stupid one-dimensional character in a children's story, alright?"  
She placed a hand on his shoulder, and then walked off into the night.  
"Wendy!" He called after her, and with a sigh, she turned. "Peter likes the black berries."


	6. Chapter 6

Wendy walked back to the treehouse, her basket full of black berries, just like Hook said.  
_'what if he was lying, what if they're poisonous' _Her thoughts said.  
Well, she'd just feed them to Peter first, and he couldn't really die. Characters in a story never truly die, Hook had taught her that four years ago, when he was 'eaten' by a crocodile. Maybe the Lost Boys couldn't die either, but Wendy wouldn't take that chance.  
"Wendy?"  
"Yes, Peter? i brought back berries."  
"Boys, mother's making dinner!" He shouted, his voice echoing around the house, rousing each boy from their peaceful sleep.  
"Why'd you do that, Peter, I was dreaming of my own mother and father?" Said one of The Twins.  
"No, Twin! You must never speak of your mother and father here, or one day, you'll wake up in your own bed, back at home again! And you can't ever come back to Neverland, for by then, you'll be all grown up."  
"Is growing up that bad, Father?" Tibs said.  
"yes, yes it is! You have all these adult worries and responsibilities to worry about; you don't get to have any fun or play any games, understand? Growing up, Tibs, is like turning into...into Captain Hook!"  
The boys gasped, and Wendy was sure Peter had already terrorized them with stories of the pirate captain.  
Wendy was about to correct him, to tell the lost boys they could return if they truly wanted to, that growing up really wasn't that horrible. But then she realized how correct Peter was.  
She hadn't played a game, told a story, even kissed her parents goodnight since she returned from Neverland.


	7. Chapter 7

Wendy woke up the next morning, tangled in the sheets of Peter's large bed. Rolling over, she noticed she had knocked a note that must have been resting ontop of her out of the bed.  
Quietly, she looked at Peter for an answer, but the adolescent was still fast asleep, as were all the other lost boys. Wendy seemed to be the only one up.  
She picked up the note, still half expecting it to be a messy child's scrawl, but was surprised to find that instead it was elegant, Edwardian probably.  
_My dearest Wendy,_  
She read.  
_'As a thank you for your kindness to me earlier this evening, I am inviting you to dine with me on my ship tonight. Anytime after three is good with me, it depends on your ability to slip right out from under Pan, as it seems.  
Best Wishes, Capt. James Hook'_  
Wendy smiled at the note, happy for once that she might get something better than blackberry pie for dinner tonight.  
But, of course, that was only if she could get her disappearance past Peter Pan.


	8. Chapter 8

Wendy, like an girl's mother should have taught her, wouldn't lie to Peter, not unless absolutely necisary.  
"Peter," She said that day. The treehouse home had no clock, and Peter kept track of time by sun-up and sun-down. By the sun, however, she had guessed it to be about four o'clock in the afternoon. "Peter, I'm going to go out and gather some berries, that pie was so good last night. Wouldn't you like another one?"  
Peter let out a whoop and soared towards the sky, laughing. Wendy smiled at him politely, and then proceeded to take a basket and head towards the door.  
She would simply gather berries on the way to dinner, so she wasn't completely lying.  
Hook was waiting for her on the deck of the ship, wearing his finest red jacket, this time with black buttons instead of red, and a loose white undershirt.  
"Here she is, Capt'n!" Smee said, handing Hook back his telescope.  
"Could you be any louder, Smee?" Hook said with a sigh, hoping Wendy wasn't offended by the prospect of him having his crew members keep an eye out for her.  
"Well, if ya like-"  
"It was sarcasm." He rolled his eyes. Once he had found Smee's stupidity funny-that's why he was made first-mate in the beginning-but currently it was becoming more of a hassle. "go down to my private quarters, Smee, and set up dinner there."  
Smee nodded, awkwardly scurrying off towards the Captain's room.  
"Ah, Ms. Wendy, so glad you could make it."  
Two of the crew members helped Wendy climb aboard the ship, they were waiting at the bottom of the ladder for her. She thanked them for their assistance, but waved their helping hands away, climbing the ladder entirely on her own.  
Hook noticed this, silently appreciating her independence and strength.  
"Thank you for the invitation, Captain." She accepted his hand, however, and stepped off the ladder onto the Jolly Roger. "Goodness, i haven't been here in years."  
"You were here just a few nights ago, Wendy." Hook laughed, suddenly questioning how his feelings had turned from kidnapping the intolerable Wendy Darling to inviting Ms. Wendy to dine in just a few days. "And please, call me James."  
"I guess you are right, then, James. But those memories aren't as clear as...as the day you stole me from Peter!"  
Hook flinched, expecting her words to become biting and cruel, but instead they remained calm, playfully, and she quickly laughed, putting an arm around the pole in the center of the ship and twirling around it.  
"Isn't this the very pole, Captain James Hook, that you tied me around?" She questioned him, not fear but curiosity, teasing words in her eyes.  
Hook drew close to her, grabbing her free hand.  
"It's James, lovely. Now come along, we'll be dining in my private quarters."


	9. Chapter 9

The dinner was better than anything Wendy could have ever imagined, filled with food that could have belonged in the best restaurants of London. Wendy couldn't eat much, however, because her stomach was full with something else instead; an unknown, unrecognizable feeling that felt just as nauseating as it did comforting and exciting.  
"Are you yet finished, Ms. Wendy?" Hook gave a pointed look at her full plate. "Was the food not to your liking?"  
"No, it was absolutely delicious! It's just that time isn't on my side, I still have to go home to Peter, remember? He-"  
"He doesn't know that you came, does he?" Disappointment and fear flashed through Hook's eyes, fear that he would lose her again, at the end of the night. Wendy, thankfully, did not see this fear. She only noticed the disappointment, which angered her most.  
"What did you expect, James? That I tell him I was invited here, that I start another feud like the last time? I won't be responsible for his death, James, nor your undoing!" Wendy stood up, angrily pacing the room, wanting to leave at yet at the same time not wanting their time together to end.  
"You really think I'd win then, if we should fight, Wendy?" Hook said, dragging his hook around the rim of the empty wine glass thoughtfully.  
Wendy let out a laugh, as if this thought was crazy to her, before calmly answering him.  
"He's just a boy, James."  
With this Captain James Hook stood, going around and grabbing Wendy tightly by her bicep.  
"Then come away with me, Wendy! Come sail with me, and we'll leave Neverland, we'll leave it all behind. You can forget Peter, forget your parents. Hell, forget everything you ever knew! I can teach you to a pirate, the best one that ever lived."  
Wendy let out a sad, melancholy laugh at how similar Hook's speech was to that of Peter Pan talking to a thirteen-year-old her in a windowsill, a thirteen-year-old girl that knew, even then, that something was wrong with this boy, wrong with Neverland.  
"Peter's just a boy, and he needs a mother." She grabbed Hook's forearms, the only place she could reach with her biceps still firmly grasped in his hands. "If I leave him, especially for you, i don't know what will become of this place, become of the boys, the people on it. I was selfish once, but I don't think I can afford to be that selfish again."


	10. Chapter 10

Wendy returned to the treehouse in the forest that night, thoughts of James' words in her head.  
_Me, Wendy Darling, the best pirate that ever lived? Never!_  
She wanted to laugh at just the thought of it, but she knew in the back of her mind that Captain James Hook always kept his promises, especially those that had to do with revenge.  
_Perhaps i was right to refuse him. _Wendy thought. _The chance of him only seeing me as revenge still stands. _  
Wendy forced herself to think of that while she undressed and climbed in bed next to a sleepy Peter, who probably wouldn't even remember tomorrow morning that he'd had no dinner last night.  
Peter was kind, and gentle-Peter was what she grew up with, what she knew. But Wendy always was an adventurous girl, and maybe, somewhere in her mind, she was already a pirate, waiting to concur new land.


	11. Chapter 11

"Wendy, wake up!"  
"You have to get up, mother!"  
"Mummy!"  
Wendy squeezed her eyes tighter shut, before finally succumbing to the boys chants and opening them to find herself surrounded by all the boys living in the treehouse.  
"What is it, boys?" She asked, unenthusiastic.  
"Peter says we're going to go fight Hook today, for the first time ever!" One of the boys said.  
Wendy's eyes snapped wide open.  
"Peter!" She grabbed his hand quickly, dragging him away from the horde of boys.  
"What is it, Wendy? Don't you want to watch us fight! Oh, you used to love it. 'Course, mother's don't actually fight, you see, but-"  
"You can't go, Peter. The boys...they're even younger than the last ones! They'll get hurt."  
"No, that's nonsense! Nobody gets hurt in Neverland!"  
"Yes, yes people can get hurt, Peter." She thought back to what happened to the fairy, the fairy whose name she had forgotten. "Don't you remember the fairy, Peter? She was just barely saved."  
"Tink?" Peter shook his head, trying to rid himself of the bad memory.  
"What ever happened to...Tink, right?"  
"She," Peter sighed, sitting down, obviously upset. "Every time a child says 'I don't believe in fairies' a fairy dies, remember?"  
Wendy gasped, but managed to hide it behind her hand.  
Peter stood up abruptly, after a moment of silence.  
"But anyways, fairies are the only ones who die in Neverland-and that's only because of the recklessness of...of people like Hook!" Before Wendy could stop him, he turned around to the many eager faces of very young boys. "Now c'mon boys, let's go fight a pirate!"  
They ran to the door, Wendy following them as they flew to the boat, while she kept to the ground.


	12. Chapter 12

"Captain Hook, sir!" Smee said, running into Hook's sleeping quarters at some ungodly hour of the morning. "Peter and the Lost Boys are approaching the ship from above."  
Hook bolted straight up in bed, grasping around with his good hand for his hook as he gestured for Smee to help connect it.  
"Is the crew aware?"  
"Yes sir!"  
"Tell them to hold off the lost boys for as long as they can, leave Pan to me."  
Smee nodded, rushing out of the room while Hook grabbed his overcoat and sword, prepared to give Peter Pan the news that would finally sink him into the ground.  
Meanwhile, Wendy's legs couldn't quite keep up with the pace of those flying Lost Boys; by the time she had reached the beach, the fight had already begun.  
Regretfully, she ran out of the house so fast, she didn't think about grabbing a weapon or anything to defend herself with. No, Wendy darling was standing barefoot on hot sand in her white nightgown, contemplating wrong and right.  
She looked at the two man before her, one dressed in all white with a silver hook for a hand and the other merely an adolescent, clad in leaves and blood, Wendy did not know whose heart was blacker, whose soul was doomed.  
Or who she loved more.


	13. Chapter 13

Hook was on top of the mass, near the lookout's post, while Peter was flying above him; Hook brandishing his magnificent gold and silver sword, made by the finest blacksmiths in all of Old England, and Peter with a child's makeshift knife in his right hand. His left, however, remained over his stomach, where only moments earlier Hook had delivered a pointed blow.  
The wound (which, if you were wondering, Wendy from her spot on the beach couldn't see) had definitely destroyed his fighting skills. Pan was getting sloppy, his blows had less strength behind them, his body slowly cascading towards the deck of the ship.  
"Aren't you scared, Peter?" Hook shouted as the sky around them turned dark with gray and black clouds, the weather changing with Pan's mood.  
"To die..." Peter said as he found, a smile on his face though the words took pointed effort. "Would be an awfully big adventure."  
And with that, Peter fell to the deck of the ship with a _clunk. _

* * *

Peter looked around for someone to help him, but his lost boys were all already engaged in battle with another pirate-they had been outnumbered.  
"Don't go and die on me yet, Pan, I have one more bedtime story to tell you." Hook said, sticking his sword into the ground directly next to Peter's head. "Once upon a time, there was a boy named Peter Pan, a boy who lived in a magical place with mermaids and fairies and pirates and adventure, lots and lots of adventure. He met a pretty girl named Wendy, who told him bedtime stories, and he took her away to Neverland to stay with him. It was all good and happy at first, but then Peter got greedy. He wanted Wendy to stay with him forever, and she wanted to grow up. So he took her home, and do you know what happened, Pan? She grew up!"  
"No!" Peter shouted, withering in pain on the cold deck of the ship. The sound, however, was carried off on the wind towards the ocean, never reaching Wendy's ears.  
"Yes!"  
"But she came back, Hook."  
"Someone hasn't told you the whole story, now has she, Pan?" Hook laughed, basking in the chaos around him. "She didn't return by choice, boy, I kidnapped her as bait."


	14. Chapter 14

Wendy hadn't heard Peter's cries for help, or the Lost Boys frantic glances at him, but she did see the boy in green leaves fall from the sky.  
Wendy rushed towards the ship and hid behind a barrel, silently scolding herself for her own stupidity of leaving with out a weapon.  
It was from her hiding space that she heard Hook's story, heard Peter's desperate pleas for it to be all lies.  
"Someone hasn't told you the whole story, now has she, Pan?" Wendy heard Hook say. "She didn't return by choice, boy, I kidnapped her as bait."  
Daring to peak her head out from her hiding spot, she caught a glimpse of Peter's face, the disappointment and pain evident in it. Without thinking, she dove her way to him, crawling around the groups of fighting pirates and lost boys, she appeared in front of Peter.  
"You have to let me go, Peter." Wendy said, sitting down beside him and taking his hand in hers as his eyes filled with tears and every pirate and lost boy stopped fighting to look at them, to watch their great leader fall at the feet of a girl-no, a woman.  
"Why-why don't you love me Wendy?" Peter said, tears choking him.  
Wendy ran a hand down his cheek, looking up to the sky as if asking the gods for help.  
"You're just a boy, Peter, I don't think you know what love is."  
"If that's all I am, just a boy, then I shall die that way too now! Thanks to you, Hook, I'll never understand anything, not banks or emotions."  
"I didn't rob that from you, Peter, Neverland did." Hook said, for the first time in his life, he was calling Peter Pan by his first name.  
And on his deathbed, too.  
Slowly, Peter started to drift off, as if he was falling asleep.  
"Can't we help him, Mother?" One of the lost boys asked, coming up behind her. "Peter said something about Neverland having a special plant that heals everything."  
"We could, but i think it's better this way." She looked at Hook, as if asking for guidance. "Just leave things be the way they are, don't bring Neverland into it."  
Hook looked as if he was holding back tears as he placed an arm around Wendy.  
"Let things go naturally from here on out; let things work right, not like they were for centuries." Hook said, referring to Pan's never ending adolescence.  
And so the crew removed their hats and the lost boys cried as Wendy held Peter's hand as he slowly left the world.  
"Stay with me, Wendy." Peter said, struggling for words.  
"I will, until the very end, Peter Pan."

* * *

**A/N-There is a book called Forever Neverland by Heather Killough-Walden (it's part of a series but i can't remember the names of the other ones) that is sort of a continuation of Peter Pan where Wendy is older and such, but it talks about Neverland being less of just a place and being more like a person with feelings and such, and it uses Peter to keep it alive. The Neverbird (which will be mentioned in the next chapter) is basically another tool Neverland uses to defend itself, and to hide the fact that it's not always such a happy place.  
You should definitely try reading the books, as they're a very interesting take on Peter Pan, if you google the title you should be able to find the rest of the series. Also, I'm very sorry if you don't like my thoughts about Neverland being 'evil' and that, it's just my take on things. xx.**


	15. Chapter 15

"I don't think you're a bad person, you know." Wendy said later that afternoon.  
There was a kind of unspoken truce declared after Peter's death, and everyone banned together to carry his body up to where the Neverbird his buried, and dig him a grave right next to it.  
Wendy was staying with Hook in his private quarters now, as currently the ship was overpopulated with the added Lost boys who were sleeping with the crew for the time being, until everyone figured out what to do.  
"Well you should, love." Hook said, obviously very upset. He was sitting at his desk, having already removed his hook, with his head down and the veins in his neck throbbing with tension. "I've just killed a very innocent, young boy. At the moment, I hate myself."  
Wendy groaned, obviously not wanting to say what needed to come out.  
"You did the right thing, James, even the lost boys know it. Peter was sick, Neverland made him sick, and you...you freed him, Captain James Hook." Wendy added a playful laugh at the end, trying to return the captain's good spirits as she took his hat and placed it accordingly atop his head. "Neverland had him trapped, mentally and physically. He was growing up, and it didn't want him to, it resented him for it. If any more time had gone by, his mind would have been a jumbled mess of numbers and girls and lost boys. He wasn't Peter Pan anymore, James, because Peter Pan would have been a man by now, would have been dead by now anyways, probably, but Neverland wouldn't give him that satisfaction."  
"Not unless it was done by my hand, eh?"  
"Well, what kind of story would it be if the hero died of the flu?"  
"Do you think that's true, Wendy, we're in a story? I mean, you are the storyteller, of course."  
"I don't think we're in a story, silly." Wendy wrapped her arms around the seated, upset captain, giving him a gentle peck on the lips. "I think we are the story."


	16. Chapter 16

The next day, Hook and everyone on his ship left Neverland-for good this time. They left behind her wailing winds and dark, cloudy skies for the clear blue night of London, England, the stars made even brighter by the ship's closeness to them.  
Their first stop was Kensington Gardens, where we returned each one of the lost boys, who insisted they were much too adult to be dropped off at their homes now. Still, Hook split the crew up to follow each one of the boys and make sure they returned safely.  
After that, it was to the Darling household.  
Hook was silently steering the ship by memory, and that gave Wendy a lot of time to think. She wasn't quite sure if she wanted to return home yet, return to the adventure-less world where she'd be forced, in a matter of weeks probably, to marry a rich man whom she did not love.  
There was no man in London for Wendy Darling, not one that she would love. There were only two men in this universe and beyond that she would even consider loving-one was lying six feet deep back in Neverland, and the other was beside her. Still, only days ago she had told Hook she would not be selfish again, and wasn't it selfish of her to leave her parents, especially when she was their only hope of living the way they had been?  
But when Wendy arrived at Number 14, there was another aspect Wendy hadn't even imagined.  
All the windows were dark.  
Wendy was the first to jump off the ship, running into the nursery and calling for her mother, her father, for anyone! But the only answer she got was silence.  
She stood in the center of the nursery, eyes closed while she wished for Nana's familiar bark, for her mother's warm embrace, but instead it was stronger arms that wrapped around her.  
Hook must have entered the room behind her, and he approached her now, snaking his arms around her from behind.  
"Come see the sea with me, Wendy; come be my siren and I'll never, ever leave you."  
Wendy did not respond, only allowed him to lead her from the house back on to the ship and sail towards the clear blue water of the sea.


	17. Epilogue

There was some beauty in abandonment, in loneliness.  
In the beginning, it was amazing.  
Hook was captain, as always, and he truly was the best captain she had ever seen. Wendy had been to foreign islands, fought opposing pirates, she had been in all seven continents.  
All that was in the first fifteen years alone; after that things started to slow down a little.  
Hook needed a new crew often, none were quite as loyal as that first one they'd brought with them from Neverland. Alas, those pirates still had memories of past lives, of where they came from and what they left behind. Most of them thought they still had time left with their loved ones, and still most returned to empty skeletal houses.  
The fifteenth anniversary of returning home from Neverland was also the day of smee's death. He was a good man, but immortality did him better than the seas ever did, and Wendy found Hook crying over his dead body the next morning. Smee had died in his sleep; he was a diabetic, a fact that had gone unknown by everyone on the ship, maybe even Smee himself.  
After that Hook was her only confidant on the ship, the only one she could whisper words of Neverland and Peter Pan to who didn't think she was crazy. When he died two years ago, Wendy completely lost it.  
Everyone who was working on the ship was taken off, she was determined to commandeer it herself. She had to remember how to get the ship to fly as well, because Wendy hadn't had many happy thoughts in quite a while, but finally she was here.  
Her time was running out, she could feel it in her bones, turned brittle by the sea and the loss of so many loves; yet the moment she stepped foot on the sand, she was thirteen again, running wild and free.  
That was why she brought the dagger, she silently reminded herself, because Neverland will do anything not to let it's last chance, it's last hero, escape.  
Climbing the rocks to the grave of the Neverbird was easier in her thirteen-year-old body, and she silently sent Neverland a thank you for that, and because it was only sunset when she arrived at his grave.  
"Here you go, Peter, one last sunset together." She smiled at him. "You know I'd take you out if I could, right? We could go back to that tree branch where you watched the sunrise every morning. Of course, this is sunset and that's a different thing...but still."  
She laughed, glad her memory hadn't failed her either.  
Lately it had been, and she'd been having trouble recalling which hand her husband wore the hook on.  
Neverland was acting like her friend, but maybe it knew what she was going to do, maybe it wanted her to feel young and like she has a whole life ahead of her yet, so that she'd get to feel the whole pain, the whole idea really, of dying young.  
But when the sun went down, however, Wendy knew it was time.  
Quietly, she laid down ontop of the exact spot they buried Peter all those years ago, and slid the dagger into her stomach (though not her chest).  
"We're one, you see, Peter?" She said, letting out an almost hysterical laugh that turned into a loud sob. "It's my fault you're dead, I should have never come back. But it's okay, because I'm going to make it up to you, Peter, right now, tonight!"

At thirteen, Wendy Darling fell in love with a boy, a boy who didn't know what love meant. At seventeen, she fell in love with a man who knew not only of love, but of temptation, of desires. And at seventeen, she saw that thirteen year old boy again, and he had fallen in love with her, but he thought it was too late. And now Wendy Darling, at seventy-one, was here again, proving to her first love that it was never, ever too late.  
THE END.


End file.
